Butterfly Kisses (2018 film)

Butterfly Kisses is a 2018 found footage horror film written and directed by Erik Kristopher Myers. The film follows filmmaker Gavin York (Seth Adam Kallick) who discovers a box of videotapes depicting a disturbing project by film students Sophia (Rachel Armiger) and Feldman (Reed DeLisle) about an urban legend known as Peeping Tom. As he sets out to prove the footage is real, he becomes obsessed, along with the film crew following him.

The film is a deconstruction of the found footage genre, exploring what if films like The Blair Witch Project, The Last Exorcism, or Paranormal Activity were real. The director also considers it a mixture of academic criticism and the real world horror of how far an artist would be willing to go.

Plot
In May 2015, struggling wedding videographer and film school dropout Gavin York takes an interest in a box of tapes that are found in the basement of his in-laws' newly-purchased home. Despite the fact that the box is labelled "Don't Watch," Gavin becomes intrigued and decides to make a chronological edit of the tapes.

He discovers that the tapes each contain parts of a documentary from March 2004 by film students Sophia and Feldman, who are trying to prove the existence of a local urban legend, Peeping Tom. The legend states that a person can summon Peeping Tom by staring down the Ilchester Tunnel at midnight, for one hour straight, without blinking. Once Peeping Tom is summoned, he will get closer to the victim each time they blink until he kills them. Unable to complete the task, the students decide to set up a camera and film the tunnel, reasoning that the camera acts as a human eye. They review the footage to discover that Peeping Tom indeed appeared on camera in the distance. Peeping Tom appears on ensuing footage, and the two realize that his presence has infested the camera itself and is stalking them. Feldman becomes unstable as he realizes that Peeping Tom is looking for a way to escape the camera in order to kill him. The students grow resentful of each other and trade blame for the danger they face. Eventually, Feldman is murdered by Peeping Tom, forcing Sophia to continue alone.

Aspiring to finally break out into a legitimate filmmaking career, Gavin hires a documentary film crew to chronicle his discovery of the tapes and the research to prove Peeping Tom's existence. However, an investigation fails to produce any evidence that Sophia or Feldman ever existed. Gavin's obsession with Peeping Tom begins to degrade his mental state and strains his relationship with his wife and son as he exhausts their finances to fund his project.

While going through the footage, Gavin's team, headed by filmmaker Erik Kristopher Myers, grows skeptical of Gavin's claims and many begin to suspect that Gavin made the footage himself. The team also discovers that the original filmmakers had previously won an award for a documentary where they used an actor to portray a real person, which continues to cast doubt on the "discovered" footage.

Unable to garner interest from news stations or local interest groups, Gavin posts the footage online and arranges an interview with a radio host to promote it. Instead of being taken seriously, Gavin is mocked by the station's callers, culminating in humiliation when The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sánchez calls in to dismiss it as an obvious derivative film. Afterwards, Gavin discovers a note from his wife stating that she is leaving him after he used all the money for his son's education to fund the film.

The team find Gavin outside the Ilchester Tunnel in an attempt to recreate the experiment using a camera. Before the team can decide on a course of action, Gavin runs down the tunnel with the camera and vanishes. Nine days later, Erik receives a package from him containing a DVCam film, a package for Sophia Crane (with an address that cannot be verified), and Gavin's notebook with a hotel keycard inside. The crew arrived at the hotel room to find Gavin's mangled corpse in the bathtub. They debate showing the police their footage, but opt not to, and Erik decides to continue the project.

Sophia's footage shows her attempting to not blink. She claims she had a dream where she was easily able to stare down the tunnel for the whole hour, but realizes that she was not dreaming and had in fact actually summoned Peeping Tom. In the final scene, Sophia claims Peeping Tom is right in front of her, but that she’s found a way to defeat him, before cutting off her eyelids with a glass shard. During the credits, Sophia, still alive, is in an insane asylum, seemingly stroking the face of Peeping Tom.

Cast

 * Rachel Armiger as Sophia Crane
 * Reed DeLisle as Feldman
 * Matt Lake as 'Mr. Folklore', author for the Weird US book series
 * Daniel Furst as Miles Sumner
 * Eve Young as Dr. Wolfe
 * Kelsey June Swann as Lilly Pine
 * Seth Adam Kallick as Gavin York
 * Eileen del Valle as Amelia York
 * Kaleo Okouchi as Carter York
 * Janise Whelan as Eve Hunkeler
 * Michael Whelan as Bart Hunkeler
 * Eduardo Sánchez as Self

Production
Erik Kristopher Myers had met Eduardo Sánchez at a sound design panel in 2014. At first, he was not featured in the script at all, but Erik's producer Cork Okouchi convinced him to call him to see if he would appear in the film. Not only did he appear, but he ended up producing, watched multiple cuts of the film, and helped focus the film from three hours to 91 minutes through feedback and positive criticism.

Reception
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed critics and assessed all as positive for a rating. Among the reviews, it determined an average rating of.

It won the award for Best Local Film at the 2018 GenreBlast Film Festival. It also won the Jury Award at the 2018 Silver Scream Famous Monsters.

The film was so successful at spreading its local legend that author Shelly Davies Wygant included it in her book Haunted Ellicott City as an actual local legend. Afterward, director Erik Kristopher Myers contacted her to let her know that he had created the legend and seeded it on the internet under a pseudonym. He was initially worried she might be angry; instead, she said she thought it was brilliant.